Happy New Year! Hopefully I get more writing done in 2019 than 2018, lol.
"...But she's your nayak," Katara said. "Why would you ever fight her?"
"What in Agni's name is a nayak?" the Fire Prince sneered, butchering the pronunciation so terribly that she almost winced.
"She's your younger sister. You're family. How could you want to hurt her?" Katara said, her voice rising steadily. She knew that Firebenders were monsters, but the thought of anyone willingly raising a hand against their own blood was unthinkable.
"I don't want to hurt her!" Zuko snapped, before catching himself. His eyes darted nervously toward the hallway, and then toward the neighboring room, before he whispered, "I don't want to hurt her, I just want to beat her. To prove myself."
"Anyone who wants you to fight your own family is someone who you shouldn't want to prove yourself to!"
Zuko clapped a hand over Katara's mouth before she realized what he was doing. She could barely hear his next words over the blood roaring in her ears, her nostrils full of the phantom scent of cooked flesh and smoldering hair. "Would you be quiet," he hissed.
Katara slapped his hand away. "Don't touch me," she almost shrieked, and for a petrified heartbeat she mistook the burning and blurriness in her eyes as his handiwork.
"Oh, no, don't cry," Zuko moaned, hands hovering uselessly. "...Uh, I mean, how dare you hit me, peasant. I order you to stop crying at once!"
His tone was so helplessly awkward and panicked that she couldn't help the tiny giggle that escaped her at his expense. Her mind wandered back to the first time she had ever met him, when the sight of her tears had made him just as terrified and uncomfortable as it did now, and something coiled tight and prickly in her chest relaxed just a little bit.
"I can't h-help it," she choked, shoulders jerking with suppressed sobs, "I thought you were going to b-burn me."
"What?" Zuko exclaimed, looking genuinely horrified. "Why would I do that?! You're injured — and you're younger than me! It wouldn't be honorable."
"Hasn't stopped anyone before," Katara muttered, hand hovering over her side, which pulsed with pain every time she repressed another sob.
The Fire Prince scowled without seeming to realize he was doing it, glancing at her injury and away again. "Yeah, well, that was… that was necessary. Azula had to do it. You're a Waterbender, after all, a Southern Waterbender. You're dangerous."
"You think she's the only one who's hurt me?" Katara asked incredulously. "I've had much worse than this. Besides," she muttered, scrubbing her wrist across her eyes, "right now I don't feel very dangerous at all."
Zuko hummed in response, neither affirming nor denying, eyes once again fixed on her burn. He seemed lost in thought.
Katara scowled at being ignored, but it didn't get her hackles up quite like Azula's disregard did. The Fire Prince was annoying, but not as infuriating (or terrifying) as his little sister. It felt sort of… well.
Sort of like when Sokka acted like a jerk.
"All right," she said, breaking the silence that had built up between them.
"What?" the Fire Prince asked, as if he had forgotten she was there.
Katara frowned at him. "I said all right, I'll help you. First things first: don't zone out when I'm talking to you."
"I didn't zone out, you impudent pea—"
"Hey, you asked me for my help, ponytail. Stop calling me a peasant," Katara snapped.
The Fire Prince sneered back. "Then what should I call you? Princess?"
"You know my name, so use it! Or would you rather call me sifu?"
Zuko's face flushed with what she could only assume was indignation. "I-I'm not calling a Waterbender my sifu!"
"Then shut up and listen."
Unsurprisingly, neither of them did much listening for the rest of the time he was there, too busy arguing for any advising to take place. Eventually Zuko had gotten so worked up that he accidentally set fire to the floorboards, and got chased off by an incensed Akimasa as Ro did her best to keep the flames from reaching the medicinal alcohol cabinet. (Katara fully expected Akimasa to pay it a visit for less than medicinal purposes soon, judging by how hard he was pinching the bridge of his nose.)
I guess his first lesson should be on self control, a tiny part of her brain whispered, the rest consumed with the knee-jerk panic that fire now inspired. She distantly registered Ro shrieking for a servant to bring water, having fully forgotten the supposedly dangerous Waterbender on the other side of the room.
Katara cast her net wide, straining for moisture, and felt some in the next room, behind the screen sliding door. She pulled it to her so quickly that it left a hole in the rice paper, and doused the fire before either Akimasa or Ro could lift a finger.
"...You could have left it to me, you know," Akimasa said wryly. "I may not be skilled enough to rely on my bending as a career path, but I am capable of dispersing a tiny fire."
"You weren't doing anything, though," Katara pointed out.
"D-doctor Akimasa! She bent! She must be punished and put back in her cell!" Ro shrieked, trying to hide her bulk behind the doctor's stick-thin figure. If she hadn't been threatening to put her back down there, Katara might have laughed.
"Don't be ridiculous, Ro, even that tired her out," Akimasa said, and now that he mentioned it, Katara noticed that she felt awfully dizzy. Oh, hello pillow, when did you get here?
"...But remind me to remove all vases and basins within a fifty-foot radius of the infirmary. That range of hers is impressive, especially for one so young."
Katara only had time to smugly note the distance (she hadn't had an opportunity to fully test it under the arena, not in Hama's cramped little cell) before she was unconscious once more.
The next few days were long and boring. Akimasa mostly ignored her, focused on mixing medicines and giving them to various courtiers and servants who avoided her eyes when she was looking at them and gawked when she wasn't. When Ro wasn't running errands or shadowing Akimasa, she pestered Katara with ignorant, offensive comments and assumptions about "ice rats." Katara was going to chew off her tongue entirely with the amount of biting it she had to do.
However, Katara found herself reluctantly fascinated by Akimasa's work. She was surprised that a Firebender could be such a proficient healer, and her own tribe's medicines were vastly different from the Fire Nation's own. People came by for all sorts of cures, even for things as minor as headaches or muscle pains. (And other, more esoteric mixtures she didn't understand the purpose of. She figured that Akimasa was keeping secret Fire Nation techniques from her, though she didn't know why his reaction when she had asked what a "contraceptive" was was so extreme.)
Katara had never been particularly interested in the mechanics of healing. She had always thought of it as just another specialized bending technique, almost as useful as the other things the Puppetmaster could do to the human body. However, thinking about the things she could do if she combined healing with Fire Nation medicine guiltily excited her. Hama would slap her if she voiced it out loud, but the Fire Nation might be good for more than just war and violence.
Not its people, of course. Just its knowledge.
When she wasn't thinking vaguely traitorous thoughts, she was trying not to think about how much her burn hurt. She was used to pain, but not when it was this severe and prolonged.
What would sifu do? Katara wondered, when the pain was bad enough to make her tear up, and knew her answer.
So, whenever the room was dark enough or empty enough, Katara hurt herself. Not badly — she just pressed on her wound until her eyes spilled over and used what little moisture she produced to expedite the process. The saltwater hurt almost as much as intentionally irritating it did, but she was making progress. Ro was furious with her for messing up her dressings as often as she did (Katara still needed direct contact with the wound to heal it, which helped produce her water supply), but Akimasa often remarked on how well it was healing, so Katara figured she was doing something right.
Of course I am. Hama's techniques are a million times better than his, and I'm her student, she thought, and was surprised by the prick of pride that caused. She had very little to be proud of, these days.
Perhaps sensing this, the spirits just had to knock her down a peg. The door slid open, and Prince Ponytail stepped into the room.
"Hello, Prince Zuko. Come to set fire to my infirmary again?" Master Akimasa asked, not bothering to look away from the herbs he was grinding into powder at his work table.
His portly assistant, who had bounced to her feet as soon as she saw his face, let out a scandalized gasp. Zuko just felt embarrassed. The infirmary was important, and he nearly set burnt it down. What if someone had been hurt? His father had been extremely displeased by his childish lapse. Was Master Akimasa disappointed in him, too?
"My apologies, Master Akimasa. I… I lost control. It won't happen again."
"See that it doesn't," Master Akimasa harrumphed, but Zuko could tell that he was mollified. The palace physician had been tending to him since he was in diapers, after all.
Zuko hovered awkwardly by the door, and shot a glance at the Waterbender, who glared at him with her searing blue eyes. This settled him somewhat — at least he always knew how she felt about him. He strode over to her and took a seat on a neighboring bed, waving off Ro's simpering offers to fetch him a chair or some refreshments.
"What do you want now?" the girl asked quietly, shooting a glance at the assistant.
"I still want your help, if you're still offering," Zuko said, just as quietly.
"Are you gonna take it or are you just gonna argue with me again?"
Zuko's nostrils flared as he took a deep breath, struggling not to snap back at her. He had asked his uncle for advice about how to avoid getting into arguments with combative girls, and Iroh had told him that if he got riled up in response that was likely playing right into her hands. (Then he had spent the rest of their Pai Sho match interrogating him about which lovely young lady managed to get him so riled up in the first place, ignoring Zuko's insistence that it's not like that, Uncle, and no I'm not going to introduce you to her!)
"I want you to help me, so. Yes. I'll listen," he said, through gritted teeth.
She sat up, then visibly winced. Her eyes darkened, and she said, "I don't know why you want my advice, anyway. One fight and I came out like this."
"...You lasted longer than I did in any of our spars," Zuko admitted reluctantly, not liking the defeat that dampened her usually lively features. Prisoners should be obedient, but if she breaks she's useless to me. Plus, Azula might actually kill her next time they spar.
It sounded like a justification, even in his own head. She was infuriating, but it was… sort of fun to bicker with her. It reminded him of summers on Ember Island, when Azula hadn't been so Azula yet. When his mother had been there.
"Did she ever burn you like this, though?"
"No, but not for lack of trying. Our teachers usually intervene before then," Zuko admitted, and saw her eyes sharpen when he said usually.
"She's your sister. I don't think she wants to hurt you any more than you want to hurt her," the girl said, and despite her obvious dislike of him and however it was she felt about Azula, she sounded sincere.
That gave him pause, almost as much as her words did. Even his mother had thought the worst of his little sister, but this girl who might kill her, given the chance, was almost defending her. He couldn't chalk it up to naivete, because the Puppetmaster's apprentice was anything but, so where was this coming from?
"You don't know my sister," he said darkly. "Everything comes naturally to her. She thinks I'm weak so she walks all over me, and I can't do anything to stop her."
"Well, there's your problem. Your attitude is letting her win," she said, and Zuko bristled.
"No, it's not!"
"Yes, it is. If your normal strategy isn't working, don't resign yourself to it. Change your approach."
"I'm not a Waterbender, I can't just abandon all my efforts—"
"You're not abandoning them!" she snapped. "The Southern Water Tribe abandons nothing and no one. We just focus our efforts on finding something that works!"
"I think you're forgetting that I'm not some tribal peasant, I'm a prince of the Fire Nation!"
"Well, this 'tribal peasant' came closer to beating your sister than you ever did!" the Puppetmaster's apprentice snarled, much more loudly than anything either of them had said before, and Zuko almost set the bed he was sitting on on fire in his anger.
"How dare you—" shrieked the portly assistant.
"That's quite enough out of you," Master Akimasa said to his patient, having risen to his feet. "Prince Zuko—"
But Zuko, ears burning with shame and throat burning with smoke, was already storming from the room.
My chapters are always criminally short considering the time that it takes to write them, oops. Next time I'm hoping we'll see even more of the royal family! Poor Katara never gets a break. Please tell me what you thought!